framing |
Working Definition:
framing: to construct a mental space containing, and defining its proportions and positioning its components with respect to figure(s) and background.
Disciplinary Definitions:
An organizing frame provides a topology for the space it organizes; that is, it provides a set of organizing relations among the elements in the space. When two spaces share the same organizing frame, they share the corresponding topology and so can easily be put into correspondence. Establishing a cross-space mapping between inputs becomes straightforward (Fauconnier & Turner 123)
"In principle everything that a speaker knows about the world is a potential part of the frame for a particular term, even though some aspects of that knowledge base are more immediately relevant to a particular term than others (and therefore more strongly activated when the term is used)." Lee, Cognitive Linguistics, 2004. 8
Frames can be graphic (charts, diagrams, typical figures.) See Clarke, J. H. (1990). Patterns of Thinking: Integrating learning Skills in Content Teaching. Boston: Allyn and Bacon., 36-38.
Comments:
A frame is a schema, that is, an identifiable unit in memory, a meaning structure (conceptual or narrational) that includes other meaning structures. In this sense, a mansion is a frame containing the concept, house. So also is a motif as in the femme fatale motif. Hence framing means to contextualize a meaningful unit of language by locating it within a "larger" unit. A house categorized as a mansion or as a hut. Categorization seems to be the underlying cognitive activity. See Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar on "abstraction" [3.3.3] and on "transformation" [3.4]
A frame is a pattern that organizes its components. framing thus is to place a component in a pattern or, perhaps more accurately, to use a pattern to give meaning to one of its components?
When I think of narrative patterns, I can see that a particular pattern gives a figure a function. For example, a quest patter gives the hero figure the function of questing. This is something of a chicken/egg dilemma. Does the author begin with a generic pattern or with a particular type of figure. Can we separate the dancer from the dance?
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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